Phenotypic and genotypic characterisation of Lactobacillus and yeast isolates from a traditional New Zealand Māori potato starter culture

Jia Sun; Olin Silander; Kay Rutherfurd-Markwick; Daying Wen; Tanya Poi-Poi Davy; Anthony N Mutukumira

doi:10.1016/j.crfs.2022.08.004

Phenotypic and genotypic characterisation of Lactobacillus and yeast isolates from a traditional New Zealand Māori potato starter culture

Curr Res Food Sci. 2022 Aug 19:5:1287-1294. doi: 10.1016/j.crfs.2022.08.004. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Jia Sun¹, Olin Silander², Kay Rutherfurd-Markwick³, Daying Wen², Tanya Poi-Poi Davy⁴, Anthony N Mutukumira¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Food and Advanced Technology, Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand.
² School of Natural and Computational Sciences, Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand.
³ School of Health Sciences, Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand.
⁴ Koa Holdings Limited, Mount Maunganui, New Zealand.

Abstract

Parāroa Rēwena is a traditional Māori sourdough produced by fermentation using a potato starter culture. The microbial composition of the starter culture is not well characterised, despite the long history of this product. The morphological, physiological, biochemical and genetic tests were conducted to characterise 26 lactic acid bacteria (LAB) and 15 yeast isolates from a Parāroa Rēwena potato starter culture. The results of sugar fermentation tests, API 50 CHL tests, and API ID 32 C tests suggest the presence of four different LAB phenotypes and five different yeast phenotypes. 16S rRNA and 26S rRNA sequencing identified the LAB as Lacticaseibacillus paracasei and the yeast isolates as Saccharomyces cerevisiae, respectively. Multilocus sequence typing (MLST) of the L. paracasei isolates indicated that they had identical genotypes at the MLST loci, to L. paracasei subsp. paracasei IBB 3423 or L. paracasei subsp. paracasei F19. This study provides new insights into the microbial composition of the traditional sourdough Parāroa Rēwena starter culture.

Keywords: Lacticaseibacillus paracasei; Lactobacillus; MLST; Oxford Nanopore sequencing; Rēwena parāoa sourdough bread; Saccharomyces cerevisiae.